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"They'd have some equivalent of the talk-and-build-a-fire rule, based on abilities of which we can't even conceive." Maybe, Ruth thought, they might recognize us as one-tenth to as much as one-eighth sapient. No, then we'd have to recognize, say, a chimpanzee as being one-one-hundredth sapient, and a flatworm as being sapient to the order of one-billionth. "Wait a minute," she said.
Every one of the thousand three hundred and sixty-five inhabited worlds, a trillion and a half intelligent beings, fourteen races fifteen if you counted the Zarathustran Fuzzies, who were almost able to qualify under the talk-and-build-a-fire rule.
Grego looked up quickly. "Leslie, I think Nick has something. What is the legal definition of a sapient being?" "As far as I know, there isn't any. Sapience is something that's just taken for granted." "How about talk-and-build-a-fire?" He shook his head. "People of the Colony of Vishnu versus Emily Morrosh, 612 A.E." He told them about the infanticide case.
"I'd say: a level of mentation qualitatively different from nonsapience in that it includes ability to symbolize ideas and store and transmit them, ability to generalize and ability to form abstract ideas. There; I didn't say a word about talk-and-build-a-fire, did I?" "Little Fuzzy symbolizes and generalizes," Jack said.
I know the way they're working together looks like cooperation on an agreed-upon purpose, but I simply can't make speech out of that yeek-yeek-yeek." "Let's keep the talk-and-build-a-fire rule out of it," van Riebeek said. "If they're working together on a common project, they must be communicating somehow." "It isn't communication, it's symbolization.
That's ridiculous, Ben." "Don't you think we can prove sapience?" Gerd van Riebeek demanded. "Who's going to define sapience? And how?" Rainsford asked. "Why, between them, Coombes and O'Brien can even agree to accept the talk-and-build-a-fire rule." "Huh-uh!" Brannhard was positive. "Court ruling on that, about forty years ago, on Vishnu.
"They don't talk, and they don't build fires," Ahmed Khadra said, as though that settled it. "Ahmed, you know better than that. That talk-and-build-a-fire rule isn't any scientific test at all." "It's a legal test." Lunt supported his subordinate.
No, I meant a case of borderline sapience; something our sacred talk-and-build-a-fire rule won't cover. Just how did this come to our attention, Stephen?" "Well, it was transmitted to us from Contact Center in Mallorysport late Friday night.
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